For Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the last-minute deal
concluded yesterday to put off elections and bring the Kadima Party
into his coalition is another instance of his crafty strategy
producing a heads, I win, tails, you lose moment in Israeli politics.
Though the scenario in which he went to the polls in September to get
a new and larger mandate from the people would have put him in a very
strong position, adding Kadima and its new leader Shaul Mofaz to the
Cabinet serves him just as well. The 94-seat majority (out of 120
seats in the Knesset) that he will now have for the next year and a
half with elections postponed until the originally scheduled date in
October 2013 will be strong enough to withstand any possible
challenge from both allies like Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman
and his Yisrael Beitenu Party and foes on the left.

Though most foreign observers will jump to the conclusion that the
Tehran-born Mofaz will provide Netanyahu with the internal backing
needed to attack Iranian nuclear targets sometime in the next year,
most Israelis are thinking more about the possibility of the largest
secular parties now being able to unite to deal with question of
military service for the ultra-Orthodox. This ought to make clear to
even the dimmest of American observers of the Middle East —
especially those so-called “liberal Zionists” who harbor unrealistic
ambitions to remake the Jewish state in the image of American Jewry —
not only the strength of Netanyahu’s ascendancy but how little the
left counts in Israeli politics anymore.

This will make Labor the main opposition party, a position it would
likely have assumed after September elections anyway. But it does so
in a position of tremendous weakness in which its voice will count
for next to nothing. The new Yesh Atid Party led by former TV
journalist Yair Lapid that would probably have stolen many of
Kadima’s centrist voters will similarly have to wait to get its
moment in the sun.

As for Mofaz, the move will set off speculation that his ultimate
goal is to integrate what’s left of the party Ariel Sharon founded
back into the Likud. Whether that happens or not, the new coalition
reflects the basic consensus that has emerged in Israeli politics
over the peace process. While there are some differences between
Netanyahu, Mofaz and Lieberman and Defense Minister Ehud Barak, the
four have much more in common on the question of dealing with the
Palestinians than they differ. All support in principle a two-state
solution and all understand that the only real obstacle to such a
deal is the Palestinian refusal to recognize the legitimacy of a
Jewish state no matter where its borders are drawn. The creation of
the unity government in which the supposedly pro-peace Kadima (at
least that’s what some Americans though while it was led by Tzipi
Livni before Mofaz defeated her in a primary) joins the government
should remind liberal American critics of Netanyahu just how far out
of step they are with political reality in Israel.

Similarly, the current government is generally on the same page on
the need to head off a nuclear Iran, giving Netanyahu the domestic
backing he will need no matter what decision he ultimately makes on
whether the country should strike on its own.

As for relations with the United States, while this development puts
an end to the October surprise scenario in which a re-elected
Netanyahu would have had two months to hit Iran while President Obama
was still running for re-election, as I had already written, there
wasn’t much chance that would happen. But with a unity government and
the polls giving him overwhelming approval, Netanyahu has all the
backing he needs to fend off any pressure from Washington in the next
year and a half on either the Palestinian or the Iranian front.
Liberal Zionists and Obama administration officials who have dreamed
of Netanyahu’s defeat are just going to need to learn to live with
him.